On the 27th of January Donald Trump issued an executive order banning citizens from the seven primarily Muslim countries (Iraq, Iran, Lybia, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) from entering the United States for at least 90 days. Why? To “protect the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United states.” In addition to this executive order, also begins a fundamental shift in American Refugee Policy: the order holds only refugee admissions for 120-day period and admissions of Syrian refugees indefinitely.
The executive order has faced backlash around the world; German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, condemned the order by stating that it is not accountable for a nation to ostracize people because of their differences in terms of background or religion and use the assumption of “general suspicion” to stand against terrorism.
On a political standpoint, not only the reaction was from the global leaders, but curiously, within the corporate world: Tech giants at the Silicon Valley united against the ban. As a matter of fact, Amazon, Microsoft and Expedia backed a legal challenge by Washington Attorney General, Bob Ferguson. The latter aims to prove that Trump’s order is against the country’s Constitution because it represents the opposite of how the U.S. has defined refugees in the past: a leader in resettling refugees since the Irish famine, World War II and the Jewish Holocaust.
On one hand, tech companies have openly voiced their concerns over Trump’s actions and the implications it will have on their employees. The incumbents such as Airbnb’s co-founder, Brian Chesky, suggested to offer free accommodation to any of its employees caught outside the U.S., unable to return home; whilst Amazon have pledged to put the full extent of their resources behind helping their affected employees.
Furthermore, after announcing that 200 of its employees are influenced, Google decided to donate $4 million to refugee causes in response to the order and Apple’s co-founder, Tim Cook, stated that “Apple would not exist without immigration, let alone thrive and innovate the way we do” as reference to Steve Jobs, the founder who was the son of a Syrian immigrant. Therefore, from a recruitment perspective, the Silicon Valley is concerned such an insular policy could create barriers to bringing great talent to America.
On the other hand, the uncertainty generated by the ban in part explains the downturn in European markets, with the FTSE losing all the gains it had made in the first month of 2017 so far. Financial markets responded negatively, as a result, the value of the dollar relative to other world currencies declined. This shows that despite the idea that investors broadly believed in Trump and his promises to cut tax rates and ease regulation, Trump’s order could do more bad than good.
After all, there is no security benefit: no American has been killed by immigrants from these particular seven nations (study by Alex Nowrasteh, CATO, 1975-2017). Samira Asgari, an Iranian computational biologist said she can no longer pursue her Ph.D. at Harvard, Oscar-winner Ashgar Farhadi cannot come back to the U.S. for the Oscars where he is nominated once again. This comes at a time when the world faces its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. One individual out of 122 worldwide is displaced and most of those are fleeing the Syrian civil war making 500,000+ dead and 4.9 million refugees are one single doubt casted out by Trump causing harsher restrictions. If Trump is worried about U.S. terrorist attacks like 9/11, San Bernardino, or the Orlando pulse shooting; this order will have prevented none of them, because no immigrant was behind those acts.
In essence, legal challenges and protests against the country continue to stop Trump’s conservative administration to try ending the era when America welcomed immigrants regardless of their social, political, religious and ethnical backgrounds. The Statue of Liberty itself bears the goals of resettlement of refugees within the 51 states:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Written by Mannat Chopra and Daniel Haywood. Edited by Jin Hyuk Choi.